15 May 2012

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair

Its time for the one with the upside down house.

Before 1972, homages to and parodies of DC superheroes aplenty had popped up in various animated exploits, but in '72 the heroes themselves appeared as guests stars outside the DC universe. The Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder made a pair of trips to Scooby Doo land (where ever that is) and Wonder Woman teamed with the kids, Brady. In spite of these three crossovers, it would be years before another such stunt occurred.

The New Scooby-Doo Movies incarnation of Scooby was the series that teamed the gang with popular culture icons including the Addams Family, the Three Stooges, Don Knotts, Sonny & Cher, the Harlem Globetrotters and the dreamed of Jeannie. The Dynamic Duo was one of the few guests to make multiple appearances with their first in The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair.

I remember this episode from my childhood. I thought the house turning upside down was one of the coolest things ever. Watching it now, its a tad less impressive, but its still a kind of fun idea if you don't think about it too hard.

The biggest problem with these episode (and the next one as well) is that 40 minutes was a lot of time to fill. It continually feels like the episode is stalling with little comedy gags, which is fine, but two episodes is really pushing it. A whole season of this would quickly become tedious to sit through.

Joker and Penguin were obvious choices for villains due to their overwhelming popularity, but it was also nice that they were not the only villains of the story.

As for this episode itself, the funhouse supplied enough different traps to keep things interesting, and I think this was the strongest of the two Scooby crossovers. In other words, if you had to pick just one, this is it. To be fair though, even with Batman and Robin, this is still a Scooby-Doo show, masks, hijinks, phantoms (even tiny ones), and all.

I must also mention, the animation errors are pretty funny to catch as well. Not only did Batman's logo invert colors periodically (or disappear completely), but parts of his suit would come and go. Strangely, even when his glove was inadvertently forgotten, his hand was drawn with a ring. Makes you wonder how "accidental" the animation errors were.